Should successful people in Illinois "go Galt"?

Successful people in Illinois lost the election yesterday. The future looks pretty bleak, not just because several good Republican candidates lost their races, but because virtually unchecked Democratic power was reinforced in Springfield.

A few local wins are small consolation for the continued rise of radical progressives in Washington and Springfield. They now have virtually unchecked power to keep ruining us all economically.

The Republican Party in Illinois has failed miserably - again - and it will cost us all dearly. The Democrats now have a veto-proof majority in both the Illinois House and Senate, as well as the Governor's mansion. Even if Republicans make a few gains in 2014, that won't change the situation. Illinois is effectively a one-party socialist state now. The Republican Party seems to lack any viable plan to become relevant again.

I don't generally like Ayn Rand's philosophy, as detailed in Atlas Shrugged, but it may finally be time for rational leaders to "go Galt" in Illinois.

If they want government to run and regulate and redistribute everything more "fairly", let them try to make it work. Stop trying to succeed in spite of them.

Focus on capital preservation and economic growth elsewhere, where business is welcomed, rather than the creation of taxable income and growth in Illinois.

Let the progressives who voted for this big government agenda feel the full adverse consequences of their decision.

No charity. If they want to rely on government for everything, let them do so. Do not help them to avoid the consequences of bad decisions. Starve the government of income to redistribute politically. Just look out for your own selfish interests, as these voters have done. Do not worry about the consequences for others. Let their friends in our bankrupt government worry about helping them.

Invest in success elsewhere. Let Illinois and Chicago implode like the Soviet Union, and then negotiate from a position of strength as it collapses from within. Don't choose to bankroll the continued destruction of Illinois by our politicians.

We don't have any obligation to "give back". Let Chicago and Illinois be like Detroit. Instead of that shining city on a hill that Reagan talked about, let Chicago be an example for others of how "progressive" policies can destroy a once great city. Don't let politicians shift the burden for their failures to you. Let them visibly fail miserably to deliver on their promises of something for nothing.

There are many other places where hard work and risk-taking are respected and rewarded, rather than exploited by politicians who trade handouts for power.

Is it time for this sort of loyal opposition, in which we escalate the fight, rather than concede defeat? Is it time for successful people to go on strike?

The fight for the future of America goes on. In that war to restore America to founding principles and real economic growth, we may need to temporarily starve BOTH political parties and the government bureaucracy of the hard-earned resources they have taken for granted.

They obviously feel entitled to take as much of our money as they want, and do as they please with it, without real constraints or even accountability for results.

Let our fellow citizens vote to take our money through the power of government without earning it - but don't give money to the politicians or party leaders who do so.

Instead, make it as hard as possible for such politicians to deprive you of what you have earned. Deny them the wealth and income they want to redistribute politically. Defend it.

The Republican Party in Illinois has failed miserably to attract voter support, or to protect the interests of the successful individuals who fund their campaigns and donate generously to countless charitable social initiatives in our communities. Instead of encouraging private success and charity, it is becoming just another big government party seeking more political power to reward their friends. It is dominated by progressive Republicans, rather than fiscally responsible ones.

This latest election proves it again, with GOP turnout no better than 2000 or 2008, and significantly worse than 2004. Obama got 15% fewer votes in Illinois in 2012 than in 2008, losing roughly 500,000 votes, but the Illinois GOP gained absolutely nothing. What has the party done to attract new supporters?

If this political party were a business, we would either shut it down or insist upon a serious turnaround action plan, probably under new leadership. Instead, as in 2008, the party leadership and bureaucracy remains in denial about the problem, and clueless about how to reverse the growing string of costly failures. While they go on with business as usual, everyone else in Illinois pays the price.

The success of Illinois is at stake. There is a reason why Illinois has lost Congressional districts in every census for the last half century. It is losing economically to other states. Successful individuals who realize that are voting with their feet by moving elsewhere.

The Democratic leadership has progressively destroyed what was at one time one of the most vibrant and fast-growing economic environments for business in the world. The anemic economic growth of this state just reflects the fact that they have not yet managed to completely stifle productive economic activity here.

We are not going to reverse that trend by doing more of the same under the same leadership.

Is it time for successful people in Illinois to "go Galt"? What do you think?

If you haven't seen the History channel series "The Men Who Built America", I highly recommend it. Here is the series finale, to be broadcast Nov 11. Other episodes are being rebroadcast, or are available online or by DVD.

We tried to play nice with the RINOs in this election after playing into their hands in the primaries by splitting the conservative vote among multiple candidates. They got the moderate, "electable" candidate they wanted in Romney despite our objections.

We swallowed our pride and did what we could to help him, even though he was following a typical failing Rove / political consultant strategy of ignoring 90%+ of the voters around the country and concentrating exclusively on just a few swing states, other than to raise money to spend there. The campaign did virtually nothing to help other Republican candidates down the ballot in Illinois or other states, or to help grow support for the party between elections.

Principles didn't matter. The ends justified the means, because Obama was so demonstrably bad that surely they could get back into power with enough money and advertising as another Hobson's choice, even though this strategy had failed against Clinton and Obama, and very nearly failed against Gore and Kerry.

They saw no reason to give voters a strong case for voting Republican. They showed no real respect for voters. They thought they could just attack Obama and the other Democrats (as well as conservatives in the primary) through a costly media-centric strategy plus a lot of GOTV calls without actually doing the hard work to organize a growing base of enthusiastic Republican voters and build up a strong campaign organization of volunteers and local staff nationwide.

That's the same approach which gave us Clinton, two very narrow Bush wins, and now the two big Obama victories even though both the White House and Senate were clearly in play among very frustrated voters. Rather than learn from repeated defeats, party leaders remain in denial about even having a problem, and are looking for scapegoats again - such as conservatives.

Rove's skim-the-market, "micro-targeting" approach to just turn out the base and pick up a few swing voters differs sharply from the patient Reagan national strategy by which he built up a growing base of public support across all 50 states over many years (from around 1964 until his election in 1980.- including learning from his defeat in 1976). Reagan won big by making the case for conservative Republican principles and values - while negotiating compromises from a position of strength - but the long decline started with George H.W. Bush, both nationally and here in Illinois. The focus shifted to cutting deals in Washington rather than earning support among voters nationwide for a more conservative, limited government Republican agenda.

The Dems have been systematically growing their base over many years while the GOP has been neglecting or even insulting theirs and just wasting obscene amounts of money on campaign consultants and media-centric campaigns with a hostile liberal media and no effective communications strategy to boldly make the case for conservative principles in America.

No more "Mr. Nice Guy", or wasting time arguing with a party leadership which has persistently refused to listen or respect us. We thought they might "get it" after the 2010 election, but they went right back to business as usual.

As soon as Romney showed signs of life in the first debate, they persuaded him to go timid again and follow a run-out-the-clock strategy as another Hobson's choice, hoping that he would win just because Obama was so obviously bad for America, without really making the case for what Romney and a Republican majority in the Senate would do.

He went back to the usual poll-tested, meaningless rhetoric as though he had no core convictions to defend. Rather than take the fight to Obama in the final debates and his "closing argument", Romney returned to the political consultant mantra about the need to reach across the aisle as the way to win the support of independent voters. In effect, that accepted the Dem premise that the real problem in Washington was all those radical Tea Party conservatives.

This was an insult to conservative voters, as though the problem is just that we all need to learn to shut up and get along with the radical progressives even though they have demonstrably shown absolutely no interest in reaching reasonable agreements with us.

Their idea of compromise is heads we win, tails you lose. The progressives take half or more of what they want, and then fight to get the rest over time, while the Republican leadership fails to even make the case to the public for more conservative proposals. Boehner is already rushing to the microphones and offering to be more conciliatory, now that he is happily rid of some more of the principled conservatives we elected in 2010. The Republicans in the House won't challenge his leadership. We will have to do that ourselves in 2014, as in 2010.

In effect, the progressive big-government Republicans are perfectly happy to keep cutting lousy deals with the progressive Dems to spend our money, raise our taxes, and drive us further into debt or weaken our nation our great detriment, while the permanent political class lives happily ever after with just very marginal changes in each election. Their idea of change is basically to rearrange the deck chairs a bit on this Titanic, and declare that we'll try to do better at avoiding icebergs in the future. If this ship of state sinks into disaster, they can just blame somebody else. There is no real accountability for their performance - unless we work to defeat them.

That game must end. If the party doesn't stand for anything different, then it has no reason for existence. It is not justified by a few abstract theoretical differences in the party platform which are hastily abandoned at the first hint of opposition by a determined and united Democratic progressive leadership.

If Boehner, McConnell and others in Washington and Springfield are going to cave on everything just to put their own jobs before our intersets, then what purpose do they serve from the perspective of "we the people" to justify electing them?

They hardly even serve as an effective check on the risk of abuses of power, as recent events in Libya demonstrated once again. The Republican leaders brilliantly concluded that this was not something which voters cared about before the election, so they basically went along with the cover-up and lies as they assumed that they would win on economic issues.

Wrong. Instead, we now have Obama pushing his radical agenda as fast as he can again, while the GOP even failed to make any gains in the Senate despite many races which should have been won. Don;t even expect the Senate filibuster to save us now. They will cave on the rules changes to make it very difficult for spineless Republicans to go on the record in opposition to Obama's agenda. Instead, we'll be back to the "go along to get along" Republican game plan of begging for a few favors and avoiding any significant controversy to protect their own jobs.

Their definition of conservatism is just to go along with business as usual in DC and Springfield by cutting whatever deals they can get, rather than standing for basic principles and fighting for what we firmly believe is best for the future of Illinois and America.

If this were a business, we would either shut it down as a failure or force a major management shake-up and a very aggressive turnaround plan. No more excuses for failure.

Frankly, that's what the party should have done in 2009, but other than to replace a few scapegoats like Michael Steele, the leadership remained in denial about even having a problem, and went back to the same failing strategies with Romney as their new McCain. They thought the solution was to raise more money and do more attack ads, including in the primary. Rather than build up the Republican "brand", they spent a fortune attacking conservatives.

Meanwhile, they actively resisted the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009 - 2010, and kept finding excuses to ignore it in 2011 - 2012. They happily accepted the progressive meme that "radical", "right-wing" Tea Party conservatives were "ruining the party" or obstructing "accomplishments" (deals) in Congress and hurting their chances of winning this election by driving voters away.

Rather than stand firmly on fiscal conservative issues, they let the progressives spread an unchallenged false narrative about Tea Party supporters as radical advocates of extreme social conservative positions, which was never the focus or the truth. It served their purposes to let the Dems demonize and smear the Tea Party as an internal threat to their own power on both sides.

Bottom line - we don't want to develop a third party, but we need to transform the Republican party because it is demonstrablly failing again and again. Over two billion dollars of donor money was largely just flushed down the drain again on the same failed strategies while we bit our tongues and let them try again to prove that their strategy works. Instead, they failed again, which will cost us all dearly. We tried to be loyal supporters, but they just treated us as useful idiots to exploit.

Never again. Rather than arguing with idiots who refuse to listen or learn to improve, we need to apply the basic principles of ruthless free market competition. We need to drive them out of business by demonstrably outperforming them so that voters flock to a better alternative to save America.

They will only change behavior when they see that the game has changed, and that they can't defeat us. If we can't beat them in the marketplace among voters, then we deserve to lose. It's time to get out there and fight it out for what we believe again, rather than simply work for these losers.